Wales' papers: Beach pollution warning and arise Sir Gerald
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Times
3 hours ago
- Times
‘It's manky and awful', says man on mission to revive Tate Britain
Tate Britain may have the beauties of the pre-Raphaelites and the landscape delights of JMW Turner, but according to its chairman, it is 'awful'. Roland Rudd said that parts of the gallery, branded as the home of British art, were not a great location to visit given their 'manky' features. Rudd was speaking as he unveiled plans to create a £150 million endowment fund for Tate, which he said would be reserved for acquiring the world's best artworks and curators. Over £40 million has been contributed to the Tate Future Fund, started by Rudd, 64, who was appointed chairman in 2021 and who said he hoped it would be one of his legacies to the organisation, as well as fixing up Tate Britain. 'At the moment, let's be honest, when you go to Tate Britain it is awful,' Rudd said. 'You have got these rows of bushes [at the front] and they look very old, they look manky. People tend to relieve themselves behind them.
The Independent
3 hours ago
- The Independent
Dive-bombing seagulls behind Royal Mail delays, postal workers say
Aggressive seagulls are causing havoc for postal workers in Cornwall, who have had to abandon their routes due to 'safety issues'. Royal Mail has apologised to residents in Liskeard after the dive-bombing gulls forced staff to suspend their deliveries in the area. The postal service has offered locals alternative arrangements – including a safer delivery address away from the offending birds and mail being held in an office. It also suggested residents wait until the aggressive birds have calmed down and stopped protecting their young – but this could be at the end of the August. In a letter to residents, Royal Mail assured customers the situation would be monitored on a daily basis. The letter said: "As you may be aware, we are currently experiencing some difficulties safely delivering to you and your neighbour due to seagulls in the area, swooping at delivering staff in order to protect their young. "The purpose of this letter is to firstly advise you of the issues we are experiencing but also to assure you that we will continue to attempt deliveries every day." It added: "Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience this may cause but whilst Royal Mail is committed to providing a consistent daily delivery to addresses, we do place the highest priority on the safety of our employees." Seagulls typically raise their young from May to late August each year and in this period, they can be more aggressive. The RSPCA says that gulls that swoop suddenly on people or pets are often trying to protect their chicks and will stop when the person or animal has moved away from their young. However, this behaviour usually only lasts for a few weeks until the chicks have fledged and are able to protect themselves, according to the animal charity. One local in Liskeard, Naomi, told the BBC the gulls nest on her neighbouring property for six weeks every year – in this time she said it's 'sort of deadly to go out'. "It's really a daily occurrence where I'm seeing people that are walking by or delivering things getting swooped,' she said. Another resident told The Telegraph: 'These birds are so terrible for being so protective of their young. Something has got to be done about these birds to stop them attacking humans.' However, others suggested the posties should just wear a hat or a safety helmet.
Spectator
3 hours ago
- Spectator
Has my father's BBC addiction peaked?
'I want the stairlift to go faster!' said my mother, as the machine she was sitting on whirred furiously while she moaned to me about it on the phone. 'How fast do you want it to go?' I asked, imagining it doing 60mph down the short run of stairs in their little house in Coventry, coming to an abrupt halt at the bottom, then catapulting her across the living-room floor because she never does the seatbelt up. 'It's too slow!' she declared, and I could hear her slapping various bits of it and banging the switches on the arm. 'When the man comes to service it I'm going to tell him to make it go faster. Come on! Come on! Blasted thing…' I imagined it again at warp speed, this time going up the stairs like a rocket, smoking at the back and launching my mother into the upstairs landing so fast she shoots through the loft hatch. In the next scene, I see my mother being removed from the loft by firemen, moaning about her hair being messed up, because there is only one thing she spends more time on than the stairlift, and that is doing and re-doing her hair, to go on the stairlift, mostly. I would not laugh or make jokes about dementia for any other reason than to survive the relentless pressure of it. As my mother and father become ever more capricious, I realise I am in danger of deteriorating mentally, going down a wormhole that no one talks about which feels like dementia is a contagion. If I do not use humour to differentiate myself from the madness that is engulfing them, then I have to shut my mind off completely to deal with it and that leads to a sort of blank-headed feeling, which persists long after I try to switch my brain back on. 'What did I do yesterday?' I ask myself, thinking, 'I have no idea. I have no memory!' My mother whirs up and down in her stairlift all day complaining about wanting it to go faster, because she needs to do her hair, while my father sits in front of the BBC rolling news, a habit he has been addicted to for years, but which became particularly debilitating after lockdown. The BBC could broadcast anything and my father would take it as gospel. If it told him to go outside and stand on his head, he would make an attempt at it. As his BBC addiction peaked recently, he was responding to me asking whether the carers had been by shouting: 'You're a bigot like Trump you are!' To which I had to reply: 'Righto, yes. But have you had some dinner?' 'You're a bully! You're like Trump!' 'Yes, Dad, I know. But did the lady come to do your dinner?' And so on. My father bought big-time into what I like to call the mainstream narrative, and he has been furious at me for questioning this narrative, and by extension our glorious authorities, who work tirelessly for our benefit and for the common good. Strangely he is very anti-Russian, which is part of the narrative he has to swallow, but as I point out to him, all this guff about me being a conspiracy theorist, it seems very Soviet to me. He had made me and my views firmly public enemy number one, along with Putin, and Trump. So I was heartily amused when my father turned around the other day and announced, with a too-casual tone in his voice: 'I'm not having any more Covid vaccine. Or the flu jab.' 'Dear me,' I said to the builder boyfriend when I came off the phone, but he was already laughing because my father had been on speakerphone. 'The government has got its work cut out if even my father is refusing vaccines now.' My father was so keen on the Covid jab that he had nine of them and declared himself thoroughly satisfied with what followed, which included getting Covid so badly he couldn't shift long Covid. Before he went downhill, had a heart attack and then a stroke, he was able to rationalise perfectly. The fact that he is now performing a screeching about-turn to declare he doesn't support Covid vaccines is perhaps indicative of dementia. He says the NHS sends him reminders and he ignores them. I wasn't sure what to say, so I said: 'Oh.' 'Yes, I stopped having them when your mother stopped,' he said, rewriting a significant period of recent history, because my mother stopped having them three years ago after an attack of vertigo, but he carried on for two more years and was having them up until last spring, according to his own records. I found the Covid booster appointment in his diary, written in his handwriting, when I was visiting them. After telling me he was going out to do something, he duly disappeared at the appointed time and when he came back I asked him, out of interest, and he said: 'No, I only had a flu shot.' So at that point, he had moved from having them and boasting about it to having them but denying it. Now he's not having them, allegedly, and boasting about it. I don't understand my father. And I resent the fact that since lockdown he has been made to recede from me even more than usual.
